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In these pages, the English spelling of the name of our motherland and mother tongue will remain Orissa and Oriya as before, instead of changing into Odisha and Odia.

Law has changed Orissa and its language Oriya to Odisha and Odia in English respectively. This is a very irresponsible law created by politicians having no knowledge on and devotion to classical uniqueness of Oriya language. When this bad law was on the anvil, we had opposed the proposal through several articles in these pages on grounds shown therein. And, when finally the law was created, we took it as an act of stupids. We stick to our observation and vow not to honor the bad law, come what may. For us, the classical uniqueness of our mother tongue Oriya is more important than the law enacted to change it. So, here we shall continue to use the words Orissa and Oriya notwithstanding enforcement of the law that has wrongfully changed them to Odisha and Odia. This is why this site will continue as orissamatters.com instead of converting into odishamatters.com on the strength of our devotion to the mother tongue which no law can change.
-Editor

Orissa High Court today found the state government guilty of favoritism and quashed its recommendation for giving Prospecting License (PL) on the Khandadhar iron ore mines to Posco-India, viewed as the object of Chief Minister Navin Patnaik’s cup-board love.

A bench comprising Justice B P Das and Justice B P Ray in hearing a petition of Geomin Enterprises has disapproved the Government’s modus operandi and directed for reconsideration of the recommendation that breathes discrimination against about 227 applicants for mining lease over Khandadhar.

The state government had recommended to the Center in January 2009 in favor of the South Korean Company in total disregard to objections of the Adivasis as well as people of Orissa to whom Khandadhar is Orissa’s life-saving eco-system.

In this anti-people act, the Government had not hesitated to slough over other applicants’ right not to be discriminated against.

This had prompted Geomin Enterprises, one of the applicants to challenge it in the High Court of Orissa and subsequently 16 others had intervened.

Navin Patnaik is in the center of suspicion as favoritism shown to POSCO was not inadvertent. It was deliberate. Earlier in December 2006 the central government had turned down the state’s recommendation for POSCO on ground of discernible discrimination and stressed on re-hearing of all applications by the state. But POSCO was again the beneficiary of favoritism.